GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

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ETHICS
the events of which we are normally conscious being
represented as the sublimated or distorted versions of
unconscious urges and stresses. The unconscious is pictured
as a restless sea of instinct and impulse, agitated by gusts
of libido, swept by the waves of desire, and threaded by
the currents of urge and drive. Upon these waves and cur-
rents consciousness, with all that it contains, bobs helplessly
like a corky the movements of the cork being determined by
the nature and direction of the ground swells below the
surface.
The familiar argument from origins is used to reinforce
the conclusion that the fundamental forces of human
nature are not rational and moral, but instinctive and
impulsive. The animal origin of man and the fact that his
roots are deep down in nature are emphasised; the inference
is that fundamentally he is still swayed by the same
land of natural forces as those which dominate the behaviour
of animals. Of these natural forces we know very little,
especially since we have succeeded in evolving reason, one
of whose main functions is to rationalise them, and so to
disguise from us their real character. But reason is itself
an expression of these instinctive natural forces, one of the
latest and weakest It is a feeble shoot springing from a
deep, dim foundation of unconscious strivings, and maintaining
a precarious existence as their apologist and their
Nor is it only psycho-analysis which sponsors this attitude
to the more lately evolved human faculties. Much
modern psychology lends support to the conclusion that
human nature is fundamentally non-rational in character.
I have already quoted a passage from Professor McDougalPs
account of instinct 1 which represents instinct as the driving
force of all the activities of human nature, including the
activity of reason, and shown how, on this view, such
faculties as reason and will come to be regarded as the
tools by means of which the fundamental urges or drives
of human nature obtain their natural satisfaction.
"See Chapter IV, p. 115.